Monday, April 30, 2012
Pensioner finally passes her driving test
Some motorists may take months to pass their driving test, others dedicate years to the task. However, one 74-year-old woman has finally acquired her licence – 58 years after her first driving lesson.
Valerie Christie originally started taking driving lessons from her mechanic boyfriend back in 1954. After their relationship ended, the driving lessons stopped too. However, when one of her friends fell ill, she decided to restart lessons in order to help him get to hospital.
Ms Christie said, “It was my friend Thomas who inspired me to do it.
“He had a stroke some time ago and we have to get him to so many appointments. And now if we want to go out for a meal, we can drive there.”
Despite failing two previous tests, she passed on her third attempt with only four minor faults.
Ms Christie is now hoping to take advanced driving lessons to effectively manage night conditions and motorway driving – which may also reduce her car insurance premium.
It just goes to show you really are never too old to learn a new skill.
Photo © kilo_3d via photobucket
Labels: car insurance, driving lesson, driving test, licence, motorway driving
Monday, February 6, 2012
Double delight for teenage test takers
Twins often share similar experiences of life's defining moments. Many enjoy their first day at school together, some move out of the family home at the same time, and in one special case twins from Bristol passed their driving tests on the same day.
What makes this story even more extraordinary is that that each sister had taken exactly the same number of one hour driving lessons, and they both began their practical tests at 3pm on January 20th.
The girl's chosen driving instructor said, “Everything seemed to fall in together – they started the same day, they had exactly the same number of lessons, they passed on the same day.”
It's traditional for twins to grow up wearing identical sets of clothes and be treated to shared birthday parties. However, the girls’ parents went to extra lengths by rewarding them with a blue Ford Ka each.
Their Mum said, “They both felt that they were under a lot of pressure, and they were worried that one might pass and one fail. They would have rather both failed than one pass and one fail.”
After joint celebrations the youngsters are expected to turn their minds to what they can do together next. Perhaps they'll both achieve the same A level marks, go to the same university and even begin same course next year.
Photo © samantha celera via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Labels: Bristol, driving lessons, driving test, Ford Ka, instructor, practical test, twins
Friday, February 3, 2012
Image more important than cost for singing star Harry Styles
Obviously keener to impress the girls than save money, One Direction singer Harry Styles has splashed out on a luxury Range Rover Sport.
Having successfully passed his driving test, Styles was apparently eager to maintain the trend of young celebrities buying high status vehicles.
Perhaps unsurprisingly he ignored the warnings of his older and more experienced management team regarding the high cost of insuring such a plush vehicle.
A source said, “Harry was told by his management that it was his decision if he wanted to buy an expensive motor, but he would have a tough time insuring it.
“He still got a surprise when the quotes stated coming in. It was a big whack.”
However, the starlet probably had little trouble finding the money, having taken his fair share of profit from sales of the One Direction album Up All Night.
And he won't have to worry about the prospect of making a young persons car insurance claim, because the Range Rover will remain in a UK garage while he and his band mates tour America over the next few months.
Photo © donkeyjacket45 via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Labels: claim, driving test, garage, Harry Styles, insure, money, motor, One Direction, Range Rover Sport, UK, vehicle, young persons car insurance
Monday, January 16, 2012
IAM fight for hard-up youths
I can remember the thrill of being told that I'd passed my driving test. The stress-inducing lessons were over and I could look forward to cruising the open roads in my Nissan Micra.
It wasn't long until reality set in and motoring became a drain on my limited finances. After paying for the young persons car insurance and filling the fuel tank I was left with barely enough for a cheap meal or game of pool with my similarly hard-up friends.This scenario has become well known amongst the UK's community of young motorists. Indeed, the average cost of insurance for male motorists aged between 17 and 22 has soared to £2,977, far beyond many people's reach.
This issue has become of such concern that the Institute of Advanced Motorists (IAM) have made demands for the government to look into ways of reducing premiums. They claim that youngsters who successfully complete advanced driver training courses should be offered discounts.
The IAM Chief Executive said, “The simplest way to reduce premiums is to prevent accidents. This is especially true for young male drivers who are at most risk of being involved in an accident. We need to start rewarding good drivers by encouraging further training through cheaper insurance”
It will be interesting to see how the government responds to these demands.
Photo © Magnus D via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Labels: advanced driver training courses, driving test, fuel, IAM, Institute of Advanced Motorists, Nissan Micra, premiums, young persons car insurance
Monday, August 15, 2011
Dad’s taxi, 80 years of service and counting
We’re all living longer. If your parents were born in the 1950s, chances are that they will now reach, or get very close to reaching their 80s and many may even reach their 90s – a far cry from life expectancy in the early part of last century, where reaching a half-century was considered for some a sign of venerable old-age.
Yet here we are in 2011. How things have changed, for example a baby girl born this year has a one-in-three chance of living to 100. In fact, according to the Office of National Statistics by 2066 there will be more than half a million people in the UK over the age of 100.
But how many of them will be drivers?
Recent figures show that there has been a 19% drop in 17 to 22-year-olds taking their driving test since 2005. The figure looks even more startling when you realise that is a drop of 200,000 drivers.And the chief reason for this fall?
Well, sadly its not improved public transport services but increases in the costs of motoring, particularly the price of young driver car insurance.
And this may not be a good thing for the drivers of the future. Not only is it harder to teach a new dog old tricks, but it’s also true that there is no substitute for experience. Simon Douglas, from the AA comments, "It doesn't matter what age you learn to drive, the longer you spend behind the wheel the better you'll be as a driver."
So perhaps we better hope that our parents live much longer than predicted, and for completely unsentimental reasons: without them we’ll be entirely reliant on the bus to get home, even when we’re using our OAP Freedom Pass.
Let’s keep our parents alive, we need the lift.
Photo © moonlightbulb via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Labels: driving test, life expectancy, young driver car insurance
Thursday, August 4, 2011
I think therefore I brake
When taking your theory and practical driving tests, you’ll probably have learnt that allowing yourself enough braking response time is quite important in order not to be involved in an accident.
Well, a scientist at the Berlin Institute for Technology called, Stefan Haufe, has been developing technology which could cut out the time taken between your brain thinking, “I need to brake”, and your leg actually doing it. He and his colleagues used 18 participants in their research, attaching electroencephalography (EEG) wires to each person’s head and sitting them in a driving simulator.
The people were told to keep driving at 100 kilometers an hour (62mph) while staying close to the computer controlled vehicle driving ahead of them. The car in front would brake without warning several times during the simulation, and the participants’ brain waves were measured as they reacted.
On average the EEG system successfully ‘predicted’ the person’s intention to brake 130 milliseconds before they physically did so.
Now Mr Haufe has stated that he and his fellow researchers are “considering to test the system online in a real car, however, if such a technology would ever enter a commercial product, it would certainly be used to complement other assistive technology to avoid the consequences of false alarms that could be both annoying and dangerous".
This sounds like a positive advance into reducing road traffic accidents, yet, if the automated vehicles Google has been testing become a reality first, then EEG braking will be obsolete before it ever became commercially available.
Let the technology race commence!
Photo © delta_avi_delta via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Labels: brain, brake, driverless technology, driving test, EEG, practical, scientist, theory
Friday, July 15, 2011
The satellites which keep global order
It takes an eight-man team and a further 5,000 civilian employees to keep these objects 12,500 miles above Earth on course, while they travel at 4.5 miles a second, and “on a bad day there isn’t even time to go to the bathroom”.
What are we talking about? The GPS satellites, run by 2d Space Operations Squadron in America, which stop planes colliding with one another, keep ships on course, save the world from chaos – oh, and keep your sat-nav on track.
We don’t give a second thought to the fantastically clever little box on our dashboard – which guides us through the UK roads only occasionally telling us that we’re actually ploughing through buildings or driving in the sea – but we should.
It’s almost a miracle that the system works at all, and some of us would be very lost without it.
Maybe from now on, instead of shouting at it when it goes wrong we should take a deep breath and wait until our hard working GPS take a moment to sort itself out, it’s the least it deserves.
Photo by Lee Jordan via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Labels: driving test, GPS, roads, sat-nav, satellites, UK
Friday, June 17, 2011
Dad’s taxi, operating since you were born
You may have been over the moon when you finally passed your practical driving test and got your own car – but your dad might secretly have been even happier than you.
A survey of fathers, undertaken by Halfords Autocentres, has discovered that dads drive their children a distance the equivalent of right around the world by the time they turn 18. Not only do they spend a large amount of their time playing taxi, but according to the research they would have to charge their children around £3,893 for the petrol.
And here’s the worst bit for many of these long-suffering dads – only one third of the youths say “thank you”.
So if your dad seemed enthusiastic about you taking lessons and passing your test and getting your own car – now you know why!
You may want to give him a lift somewhere for Father’s Day.
Image by Leonid Mamchenkov via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Labels: car, drive, driving test, petrol, taxi
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Learner driver rage
We have probably all had our bad days when learning to drive and might even have had a bad experience during the driving test too – going into the wrong lane at a roundabout, stalling at red lights – but one news report has exposed just how badly a driving test can go.
A driver, who was planning to take his test in his own car, was told by the instructor that the exam couldn’t go ahead because he had an electronically-operated handbrake, which is not allowed in a test vehicle.
Now, at this point the motorist could have sighed and felt a bit hard-done-by for the rest of the day – as most of us would have done after the test nerves reached an anticlimax.
However, instead of resigning himself to the situation, he flew into a rage and took the examiner on an anger-fueled drive from hell – breaking the speed limit and running red lights on a busy road – before the poor tester escaped from the vehicle on a side-road.
The road-rage candidate completed his unorthodox test route by accidentally hitting the examiner in the face with the car door as he sped away.
Could have gone better? Yes – yes it could.
Image by Chelsea(: via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Labels: driving test, learner driver, roundabout